


OF TINY BRUNETTES AND SHOOTING RANGES

by Ladywolvesbayne



Series: MEL'S SHORT HALO FICTION [4]
Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Fred and Veta get in trouble and kick ass, Fred and Veta give me life, Freeform, Friendly banter, but first there's guns and fun, fred-104 & veta lopis, fred-104/veta lopis, i love these two dorks, they so belong together, this thing has a bit of a plot now, when a date is not a date
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24084136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladywolvesbayne/pseuds/Ladywolvesbayne
Summary: Veta wants to try her hand-eye coordination sniping things.Fred happens to be the best spotter among the Spartans.Now, they have a dead body and a missing top-secret prototype weapon.No, they didn't kill anyone. It's just that trouble always finds these two, no matter what...SHORT FRETA STORY IN EVEN SHORTER CHAPTERSMurder and banter plot! Updates whenever I feel like it.
Relationships: Frederic-104 & Veta Lopis, Frederic-104/Veta Lopis
Series: MEL'S SHORT HALO FICTION [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783900
Comments: 16
Kudos: 45





	1. Educational Purposes Only

“I think I like this one.” she said, pulling a heavy SRS off the shelf.

 _‘She always has to go for the big ones.’_ Fred sighed inside his mind, couldn’t help to feel the pull of a smirk on the corner of his mouth. He smothered it quickly, giving himself a mental slap on the back of the head.

Since when he had inappropriate thoughts towards Lopis?

And why did he think it was inappropriate, if he’d just been pointing out a fact?

“If you want to go sniping things, Inspector, then you should take Linda with you. There’s no one better.”

“Yeah, I mean, you can’t go sniping without a good spotter, right?” Veta shrugged, holding the gigantic rifle between her arms, close to her chest. She arched an eyebrow and looked up to find his face, with absolute nonchalance. “A little bird told me that you’re the best.”

“What kind of bird was that?”

“A classified one.” she smiled a little.

“I see.” he had to smile back, it was stronger than any other impulse. “I already had plans for today…”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” her expression fell down. “Well, I guess I’ll go ask Linda, then.”

Fred raised a hand to stop her, closing his eyes. “I didn’t say I was planning on keeping up with those plans, Inspector. Let me get some things ready and we can go sniping things. As long as it’s with educational purposes, of course.”

Lopis made her best imitation of a shocked face. “ _Of course_ it’s educational, Lieutenant. You hurt me.”

“Good. Meet me at the garage in fifteen minutes, then.”

“I’ll be there.”

“And give me that before you hurt your back, please.” he took the weapon off her hands and put it back on the shelf.


	2. Big Guns & The Principle of Kidnapping

**::: 02 :::**

Veta sipped on her hot coffee carefully while she waited. A thick layer of snow had settled overnight and the air was freezing, turning her breath into little clouds. She kept her hands tightly pressed around the disposable cup to warm them up, nuzzling her chin on the thick furry edges of her coat’s hood. She rested her weight comfortably against the thick tire of the warthog, trying to ignore the fact that the tire was almost as tall as she was.

Fred had said garage, fifteen minutes. He was never late.

Oh, well. There he was. Damn, will she ever tire of just looking at him?

Were it in armor or out of it, Frederick-104 was an impressive sight. No wonder why people stared at them wherever Spartans went, but to experience Fred in his full glory was a different kind of trip. The air suddenly didn’t feel that cold. He walked down the concrete ramp with that prowl-like gait of his and entered the underground building quickly.

Fred had spotted her already, Veta didn’t even have to wave her hand to signal her position. He was good. There were reflective-blue shades hooked on the breast pocket of his uniform and he was carrying a big case in his right hand. It looked heavy.

Big enough to hide a body, she observed. Maybe even two bodies.

Why didn’t he have a jacket? Didn’t he feel the cold-ass weather or what?

“Sorry for the delay, had to deal with a thing or two. Are we ready?”

Veta nodded once, excusing him. “What’s that?” she asked, looking at the case with intent.

“I brought you something.”

She cocked an eyebrow, suspicious.

Fred smirked and dropped the huge case on the hood of the vehicle, then popped the latches open. The lid sprang up by itself with a hydraulic hiss. Veta’s eyes opened wide scanning slowly over the contents, but she managed not to let her jaw drop.

“Oh, Fred.” she breathed out, half impressed, half amused. “You brought me a gun. That’s so sweet of you.”

“It’s more of a turret than a gun, really.”

“Even better. You know me so well.”

He cleared his throat, and by all means tried not to sound inappropriate:

“You like them big. This is as big as it gets in personal combat weaponry.”

Veta smirked wider, really amused. “You shouldn’t have. So thoughtful, Lieutenant.”

“Stop messing with me.” he groaned.

But there was also a little smile hiding in there, she saw it. Alright, enough teasing.

“So, what are we looking at?”

It was in pieces, comfortably nested in the foam-sockets inside the case, but she recognized highly sophisticated magnetic coils, a powerful muzzle brake, an impressive set of lenses and a comfy-looking stock. Veta couldn’t wait to see him put this thing together, it was so entertaining to watch Fred mount a gun from scratch.

Kind of sexy, too. She banished those thoughts quickly.

He presented the device with a proud wave of his hand:

“High precision magnetic projectile weapon. Basically, it’s a personal MAC. Ten times the range, twice the speed and accuracy of the most advanced SRS. Linda already put on a request to get one herself, this thing isn’t in production yet and there’s a queue already. Highly classified.”

“If it’s so hot, wow did **_you_** get it?”

He tilted his head to the side, smug. “I could tell you, or we could go test this bad boy.”

“You pulled rank, didn’t you?

“Don’t tell Linda, she won’t talk to me for weeks if she finds out.”

“I’m almost feeling bad for making you waste your day off.”

“It’s my pleasure, Inspector.”

Their eyes met for a moment too long. She was the one that looked away, worked up.

“Fred?”

“Yes, Inspector?”

“This thing has EXPERIMENTAL labels all over it and you said it’s not even approved for production yet. Does that mean it’s going to blow up on my face if I tweak it the wrong way?”

“It’s a prototype. We’re past the blow-up phase, don’t worry.”

“Sure, that sounds _way more_ comforting.”

He raised his thick dark eyebrows. “And I have the manual.”

“… oh, God. Alright, let’s get going, I’m freezing.”

Fred closed the lid and put the latches back in place, swiftly.

She finished her half-frozen coffee with a quick gulp and tossed the cup in the garbage bin. Then, she swung the keys his way and, just as expected, Fred caught them mid-air, without even looking as they prowled around the vehicle to find their seats.

Tightly strapped to her seat, Veta opened the aforementioned manual in her pad and read.

She skimmed over the specs heading to the assembly part, the technical language was right on point and most of it she understood despite not being well versed in the workings of a regular-sized MAC cannon. All in all, looked very impressive. She couldn’t wait to squeeze that trigger and hit something dead center a million yards away. She wasn’t that good a shot but still, it was promising. The scopes had an unbelievable range, as well, the imaging-system linked to a high-altitude drone and provided all the information required to adjust the angle of firing. The drone was also inside the case. Oh, sweet Lord.

When Fred took a particularly sharp turn, she raised her head and noticed the landscape.

“The shooting range is the other way around.” she observed, suddenly stiff.

“Oh, we’re not going to the range.”

Fred seemed quite nonchalant when he answered. His eyes flickered from the screen of the mounted pad, checking out the route, to her face and then the road. The Spartan looked at her more than he watched the road, but that was the way he always drove.

“You know… you probably shouldn’t tell a defenseless person that you’re going somewhere and then driving them into the freezing woods out of the blue once they got inside your vehicle. That’s the principle of kidnapping.”

His jaw dropped a little, but he didn’t slow down.

“I’m sorry, the shooting range just won’t do.”

“Next time, talk to me. I don’t like surprises.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you, Inspector.” Fred focused on the road again, a little uneasy. But after a few seconds of more intense driving, his shoulders and the tight grip he held on the wheel relaxed. “And besides, you’re not a defenseless person.”

“Nice compliment, still suspicious.”

“Sorry.”

Veta tried to shake it off. He didn’t mean any harm.

“You didn’t scare me, by the way.” she insisted, clearing her throat.

 _‘You don’t scare me at all, Spartan.’_ she thought.

Fred probably decided not to add anything out of respect. Given how Blue Team behaved in general, Veta understood he had taken for granted that she’d let him take her anywhere, that she trusted him the way his combat sisters and the Gammas did. He was their team leader, after all. It brought a bit of heat to her cheeks as she studied his profile, contoured by the early light of the rising sun. She couldn’t help it.

At this point she didn’t know if she should consider this an honor or overstepping.

Outstandingly so, she noticed that despite sensing the danger of going in the wrong direction alone in a car with a man that could easily overpower her, she hadn’t been paralyzed by terror or ready to pounce and stab. The pit in her stomach didn’t form, her heart didn’t race. Well, maybe a little, but it was completely unrelated to Fred, and she kept wondering why.

Part of her was beginning to understand why. Just tried to keep it casual.

“Why the woods? I don’t want to shoot an animal, Fred.”

“We’re not going to shoot at anything alive, I promise.” he was quick to explain. “This kind of weapon needs a wide berth, keep reading the manual and you will find out why. The shooting range is just too small.”

“Sixteen squared miles is small?”

“Sorely so.”

A walled sector that put RESTRICTED AREA in big signs appeared at the end of the road. They crossed the open gates quickly, diving into a long dirt trail covered in snow and flanked by very tall red trees. She could see the distant shapes of mountains behind the trees, far away.

“Okay.” Veta commented, picking up the pad again. “Let’s see what you’re cooking.”

Fred didn’t look at her, but she caught his smirk with the corner of her eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was listening to “Long cool Woman in a Black Dress” by The Hollies and this came up. I also made up absolutely everything about the gun because I don’t know shit about guns. Can’t shake off the feeling that Fred and Veta would tease each other non-stop whenever they get more confident, adorkable banter to die for. Thank you very much for the support, as always! Check out my other works for more Halo fanfiction :3


	3. From my Cold, Dead Hands

**::: 03 :::**

She liked talking to him. And the fact that he usually replied in good humor only gave her hopes that he liked talking to her as well. In the past few months, Veta had the time to learn more about the Spartans and their peculiarities and had found that the IIs were undoubtedly a lot more than met the eye.

Especially him.

It was impossible to fight, the Inspector just felt inexplicably drawn to him.

Kelly and Linda seemed a bit indifferent, but she had caught them peeking her way once or twice. Very likely, they were very interested in what their brother was doing and perhaps even keeping tabs on her, just in case they had to deal with something. Veta was a hundred-percent sure that the Petty Officers wouldn’t hesitate to do what was required if she ever crossed a line, and honestly, the Inspector hoped that life never saw them on opposite sides of a conflict. She would hate to have to fight them, for whatever the reason. She respected Kelly and Linda well enough, even if they only tolerated her antics.

She propped herself against the giant tire of the warthog again, freezing hands in the pockets of her coat, observing the display of objects that Fred had laid out on the snowy ground over a waterproof blanket. All pieces of the experimental gun, neatly lined-up and several other items like pliers, bolts, a sturdy tripod, wires and devices that she had no idea what they were for.

The Lieutenant set himself to the task of assembling, then.

Sitting on a dropped trunk, he eyed the manual resting on his thigh every now and then, but she noticed that Fred mostly relied on muscle memory. Most guns had similar design principles, in the end, and someone as experienced as him could put this beast together from scratch with his eyes closed. It was a sight to see.

She tried not to look too much into it.

Instead, she went back to that little detail that had caught her attention, sometime earlier:

"Those are not regulation shades." Veta pointed out, now looking away.

Fred chuckled. "No, Inspector. They're not."

Her pulse lurched, reacting to the deep sound of that laughter.

She turned to face him, curious.

_He had a wonderful laugh, such a shame he didn't use it much._

"I didn't have you for a rebel, Fred." she quipped, arching an eyebrow.

Again, she averted her eyes and face trying to hide the rosy color that had come all the way up to her cheeks. She shouldn't be checking him out like that, it was disrespectful. Fred grabbed another piece of the rifle and screwed it in place. Now the weapon had a perfectly good cannon-like muzzle.

"A little disobedience from time to time can be... invigorating, I think. One picks up traits from the Marines, whether you like it or not."

"Nothing too dangerous, I hope."

"... that's classified."

"Wow. Really? What's the worst thing you've done? Steal someone's dessert?"

Fred sighed, but it wasn't a regretful sigh.

"I've done a lot worse than that, Lopis, but that's beside the point."

“Oh, please. You can’t drop one of those in front of me and not expect me to pick it up.”

“I’ll respectfully ask you not to pick it up, then.”

He looked up at her, while screwing another piece in place. Coils.

Lopis took the hint and shut up, dedicated to the task of watching him work. In less than fifteen minutes the Lieutenant had turned the bunch of assorted parts into a long, elegant and frightening device almost as long as he was tall, and even requested her help to sit it on top of the tripod. More precisely, Fred asked her to keep the tripod still while he screwed the sockets tight. They stood up together and observed the result.

Sleek, beautiful, like nothing she’d ever seen before.

The gun was also very impressive.

He propped both hands on his hips and looked down at the valley. The warthog was parked on the cliffs, from that vantage point they had a beautiful sight of a chunk of snow-covered trees and more mountains on the background. It was quiet, peaceful. Lonely. Difficult to access. It was almost the perfect location to drop a body.

Veta shook her head slightly. She was spacing out.

“Looks good.” the Inspector decided.

“Now the fun begins.”

With a big grin, Veta pulled off her coat and laid it on the tree trunk. The cold pierced her overalls, but it was manageable. Fred deployed the small drone and handed her a pad, explaining how to operate it and what she should be looking for in the video feed. While she did that, the Spartan reached to his pocket and picked up the blue shades, to put them on.

Of course, the Inspector did a double take and blushed to heck.

Thank God he wasn’t paying attention to her. Sure, the reflection of the snow probably hurt his enhanced eyes, she should’ve thought of that. But, safety or not, he had absolutely no right to look that good with blue shades. Ignoring the thoughts that paraded through her mind, Fred shifted the blanket and then dropped to his knees to finally lie flat on his belly, on the blanket, securing the stock of the weapon under his arm.

He peeked through the main lens, pulling a secondary smaller pad closer to tap the controls. Something whirred inside the gun and a set of cyan lights turned on along the muzzle, the coils hummed.

Veta stood very quiet, observing, impressed.

“I thought I was going to shoot and you’d spot.”

“We’re going to get there, eventually. Need to calibrate first.”

She squinted. “You had practice with this thing beforehand.”

“Don’t tell Linda.”

The Inspector pursed her lips, fighting back a smile.

Why was she so eager to smile and laugh, today?

“It will all go to my little black book of secrets, don’t worry. In case I need leverage.”

“Thank goodness.” he chuckled. “Okay, I think we’re ready.”

After some time of touching dials and buttons, Fred rolled slightly to the right and pulled a large magazine from the open crate that was lying near the warthog’s tire. And after checking it out, he attached the piece to the side of the main body of the gun. It clicked in place. Some lights flickered green. Armed and ready.

“We have twelve rounds, but I don’t think we’re going to shoot that many.”

“Why not? Aren’t we supposed to educate me on sniping?”

“… after you see what one of these projectiles can do, I don’t think you’d want to shoot too many of them.”

“Just what are you trying to drag me into, Lieutenant?”

The smirk on his lips wasn’t reassuring, to say the least. The Ferrets were fond of pranking each other and anyone naïve enough to underestimate them -and her, on occasion- but Lopis never thought that the Spartan-II would have a childish streak. It didn’t seem proper of them. But then again, considering their traumatic upbringing, she felt like Fred was more than entitled to a bit of mischief, and so she decided to let it go for now. Checking out the video feed according to his instructions, she manipulated the drone and directed it to its maximum altitude.

“Come here, Inspector. I’ll show you how to do it.”

That’s when Veta realized that _she would have to lie down on the ground right beside him_ to make this work. Her stomach clenched, but it wasn’t the bad kind of clench. This was Fred-104, the Lieutenant, the Spartan. She knew him. It was alright.

She squared her shoulders and kneeled, to ultimately drop on her belly and clear her throat.

She snuggled a bit closer, because it was required.

Fred was still looking down at the pad.

“You all settled?”

“I think so.” the Inspector swallowed hard. God, he irradiated heat like a furnace.

Or maybe she was too aware of how close they were.

The procedure was easy enough. Lopis already knew how to grab, how to aim and how to shoot, but Fred took his time to guide her through the specifics of the handling of this weapon in particular. It wasn’t all too difficult, she only had to pay attention to the drone signature and then synchronize that input with the mini-MAC’s built-in targeting system. The discomfort eased off rather quickly, the more she learned.

He was intensely focused on his pad, now.

“We’re looking for a red flag. Position minus six-three point four-twenty longitude, minus three-two point two-three-one latitude.”

Lopis entered the digits on the program and the drone located the coordinates.

A red flag, indeed. She heard the joints of the tripod whirr and the gun before her moved a few millimeters, then bleeped. She blinked. It was set on auto, evidently. She felt a bit cheated on, but this horse was too good to be looking at its teeth.

“Target acquired.” she said. She always wanted to say that.

“Alright, now check the scopes to see if you actually have it locked. And fire when ready.”

With the utmost respect, the Inspector grazed her cold fingers along the trigger and looked through the lens. She could see the red flag as if it was right in front of them, maybe even a couple of feet over, but the distance meter said it was over a mile away. A green square had the target on sights and locked, several statistics kept shifting on the peripheral edges of the scope. It took her a while to decide.

But eventually, Veta pulled the trigger.

There was a low sound and a gust of wind, like a shockwave.

The shot was silent, for the most part, almost unnoticeable. Heck, she wouldn’t even know it had fired if it wasn’t for the long blue streak of light that exited the muzzle.

Both raised their heads. They only saw a puff of dust and snow rising in the distance above the foliage, deep into the valley. She checked the scene with the drone’s camera. No, it wasn’t dust. It was wood splinters. The projectile literally had vaporized a large tree, reducing the midsection of its trunk to a billion small cream-colored shards. The rest of the tree toppled down, they heard the distant thud a bit muffled. Her mandible slacked.

“Holy shit.” Lopis murmured.

Fred stretched an arm above her to reach the small drone-pad she’d been using.

Close. So close, so warm. Too close. She bit her lip.

The Spartan returned to his spot, none the wiser, and surveyed the video feed.

“Looks like you dropped the target and the tree behind it. No sign of the flag. Good job.”

His smirk was just…

“Well, that was easy.”

“That was the children’s version of it. If this were an actual combat situation, we would be sitting here for days waiting for target. Target might even not show up, which makes it all a big nuisance.” he commented, resting on his elbows now.

“I figure.” Lopis commented, softly. “How far can this bad boy shoot?”

“Fifteen miles, maybe more. That requires an expert marksman, though. It would take over an hour to prepare a shot like that, with all the compensations required.”

“I bet Linda could pull it in half an hour.”

“Half? You obviously never saw her shoot. Ten minutes, tops.”

Lopis realized the Lieutenant was so comfortable that he had started to give away sensitive information regarding his teammates without realizing. Or maybe, he was trying to impress. She made a mental note about this data for good measure.

The pair executed six more shots, downing the magazine from twelve rounds to merely five left. Every time the projectiles hit something, it was obliterated. Of course, they were only using trees and rocks as targets, but it was easy to be frightened of such a perfect machine. Veta could say she was delighted; the experience was exhilarating. They spent most two hours enthralled in their game, time just flew by. The Inspector grew more confident with each shot.

So much power between her hands, too bad she couldn’t carry it.

“I thought you said this was personal weaponry. I can’t even lift it.”

Fred smirked again. “Personal weaponry _for Spartans_ , sorry.”

She gave him an annoyed look.

Her fingers were so cold. Veta snuck her hands inside her armpits as they waited.

After a moment, Fred pushed his weight up and crouched, then stood on his feet.

“Do you want to go down and check out the damage?”

“Sure.”

“One small warning: we’ll have to walk.”

“I don’t mind. Could use some movement, to warm up.”

“Through knee-deep snow.”

“Do you know how high up my knees are?” she mocked.

“Don’t worry, Inspector, I’ll pull you out if you sink down.”

“You should be a comedian, Fred. You’re so funny.”

He smiled but looked away. Was that pink on his cheeks? “Alright. Let’s get going.”

The Inspector reacted quickly and stood up too. After picking up some scattered supplies, they covered the gun with the waterproof blanket, which was white and helped camouflage against the snowy background, and moved the warthog between the trees, for cover. Then, he picked up a backpack and together they headed down the slopes, walking amongst the snow. Upon reaching the edge of the forest, Veta was panting like an old dog, more than knee-deep into the cold powder.

Thankfully the snow was fresh and not compacted, yet. It was a nuisance, not much more.

He acted like he was walking on concrete, the bastard.

“Need any help there, Inspector?”

“No, I’m totally fine.”

She would swear she heard him snicker.

After half an hour of struggle -on her part- they reached the site of the first shot. There were red particles everywhere, pieces of the flag, and splinters of wood, some of them charred. The heat had melted down most of the snow in a five-meter radius around the fallen tree.

Veta observed her work with pride.

“Damn, that was a good shot.” she said, grinning.

With critical eye, the Inspector took a good look at the surroundings and walked in circles all over the site, while Fred studied something on the pad he carried.

That was until she stopped dead on her tracks.

"Fred?"

His head snapped back, fast. Veta didn't sound frightened, but there was a hint of distress in her voice. She was looking down at the edge of the molten snow, more precisely...

_To a paper-white human hand sticking out of it._

"There's a body here." she said, flatly.

He hurried to her side, feeling something cold lumping inside his stomach.

The Spartan arrived to the same conclusion she had, unconsciously: no, this wasn’t collateral damage from their test shot, the skin was too white and the rigor mortis seemed to have settled several days prior. That body, covered in snow, had been there for a while.

“We got to report this.” he started.

Lopis was already about to crouch and examine the evidence closer.

Every hair on the back of Fred's neck blistered, involuntarily.

_He heard the gunshot, she didn’t._

And he didn’t hesitate to lunge forward, trapping Lopis in his arms and rolling with her out of the trajectory of the projectile that impacted on the tree behind them, shattering its trunk to a billion of splinters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a bit of inspiration from the movie “The Jackal” (1997) with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere, mostly for the weapon. Damn, that’s a great movie. I know nearly nothing about guns, mind you. HOWEVER, in fantasy settings such as movies and videogames, I totally love fancy guns and awesome people that know how to use them properly. It’s the only instance in which I would grab a gun to shoot at something, in the virtual realm. Anyway, I hope this wasn’t too awkward. Soon enough I’ll return with what’s next. 
> 
> I can’t wait to read Shadows of Reach people. I just can’t wait.


	4. I got your back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, uh… I couldn’t sleep, so I got up, turned on my laptop and did this. Also, I didn’t even check the spelling, so, fuck it. Leave a comment if you like it, at least :P

**\- 04 -**

It was a very confusing moment for Veta.

First, Fred tackled her to the ground without any kind of warning. She clutched to the front of his uniform’s shirt, perhaps to stop him; an instinctive and futile reaction. Second, they landed hard, rolling together on the cold, frozen ground through half a meter of dusty snow at the same time as a deafening, booming sound engulfed them. Third, there was another sound that vividly reminded her to the violent tropical storms on Gao: a hundred sticks cracking at once ten times louder than the boom from before. That’s when it all hurt.

She screamed. Sound stopped completely, the air escaped from her lungs.

It took her a short while to come around, her movements were slow, her fingers trembled. A strange numbness had overcome her. Veta could only sense the furious beat of her own pulse on her temples and thumping inside her chest, her own agitated breaths. Her ears were ringing, there was an intense pain behind her eyes. She sensed that they had stopped moving. 

Her back felt cold, there was a hot, dead weight on her. It was dark.

_She panicked._

She couldn’t help it, the ancient response kicked her instinct and fear flooded her. She tried to push and kick, desperately. The dead weight moved, suddenly it wasn’t dark anymore but they were rolling, again. They came to an abrupt stop. Since her ears were still ringing, she was barely aware of another booming sound… her head seemed to be underwater, or something. Hands (but not her own) covered her ears.

Again, she was vaguely aware of another mysterious thunder.

Debris rained over her face, some entered her mouth. It tasted and smelled like ashes.

She tried to speak, but all she could hear was this muffled sound inside her head.

Someone was talking to her. It had to be Fred.

_She couldn’t hear him._

She couldn’t hear anything above that loud ringing.

The former Inspector might or might’ve not lost consciousness for a moment, her head was still spinning when she managed to open her eyes again. His face was too close, his eyes were so intense. He had lost both the cap and the blue shades.

She reared back a little, burying herself in the snow, gasping.

“Veta.” he was calling her, she could read his lips. “Veta, can you hear me?”

Barely. It was such a shame that his gorgeous voice sounded muffled and distant. She made a hand signal to indicate.

Fred’s gaze was on fire. He was lying on his right side, next to her, his uniform dusted with snow and wood splinters; the pose and body language clearly suggested that he had just rolled off her. Veta tried not to think about that. The Spartan had more than a few cuts on his forehead and left cheek, a congealed drip of blood down his neck. It didn’t seem to come from his ears, but still, her first instinct was to check herself and she sighed in relief when her fingers showed up clean. No acoustic trauma, or nothing too severe at least. She looked around, observing that they were more or less hiding under a frozen bush, in a bit of a dent on the forest floor. Perfectly concealed. He didn’t move, still half-hovering above her almost as if he were shielding her from something else.

The good thing is that it didn’t feel wrong.

Fred was saying something. She could hear him a little better, now.

“If you are wounded, tell me where!”

She shook her head. “No.” she articulated, to the best of her ability.

Veta patted his chest lightly, twice, Fred gave her a thumbs up; he wasn’t wounded either.

No need to ask what happened: either the mini-MAC had fired itself by accident and almost killed them (it was a prototype, after all) or someone had tried to kill them. In Veta’s experience, the latter was the most probable answer. It wouldn’t be a first for her.

Fred confirmed shortly after:

“I’m sorry about that.” he started, and this time she heard him, although he still sounded like he was talking underwater. “But I wanted them to assume that they had vaporized us along with the trees.”

Oh, yeah. Assassination attempt. Nice.

“Are they gone?” she croaked.

“Yeah. They took the warthog _and_ the gun.”

That kicked Veta immediately back into the world of the living. Her eyes opened wide.

“ _What?_ And you didn’t pursue?” she couldn’t believe it.

“No need.” Fred shook his head.

“What do you mean ‘no need’? Last time I checked, Spartans can’t outrun warthogs.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You would be surprised.”

“You said that was a heavily classified prototype weapon! We can’t let them get away!”

“ _Like hell_ they will get away.” he snarled. “I had to file twelve applications for this.”

Veta grabbed his shoulder and pulled up, to sit on the frozen ground. She had to hold on to him a little longer, until her brain stopped rattling and hurting inside her head. The preposterous ringing was barely a background noise by now, but she still couldn’t hear right.

“You take me to such nice places, Fred.” a long sigh escaped her lips. “Did you see where they go? Did you call reinforcements? How many people?”

“I keep telling you, there’s no need. Nobody will get away so easily; they took the warthog and the gun, but they left the weapon’s case and some equipment behind. And one more thing.” he rolled back a little bit, resting his weight on his right elbow, and plucked a pad out of his thigh pocket. “We still have eyes on the sky.”

Veta’s mouth closed immediately. _The high-altitude drone_.

“You still have control of the drone?”

“Technically, yes.” Fred grimaced, showing her the pad. It had a massive crack all across, diagonally. Half the screen was working, the other half was a pretty display of rainbows. “I think I landed on it.”

That’s how he knew about the case and the equipment left behind. How long had she been out, then? It didn’t matter. Veta searched for her own pad, which was also in the thigh pocket of her pants. Hers seemed to be intact.

“Can’t you connect it using my pad?”

“You don’t have the app. And access to that app is…”

Veta finished for him: “Classified, your favorite word.”

The Spartan gave her a coy smile, and his voice was a bit softer when he asked:

“How’s the head?”

“I feel better.” she let go of his shoulder, at last. “Are you sure they’re gone?”

Fred nodded. “The roar of a warthog riding into the sunset is hard to miss. There’s also the matter of the frozen body.”

The body. Yes, maybe the body would have some answers.

“Can I stand up, or someone is going to blow my head off from fifteen miles away?”

“They’re gone.” Fred reassured, pushing his weight with his elbow to sit, just like her. “Not too far, though. I suggest you examine the scene quickly, so we can move. I want to catch these bastards before dinner, preferably tonight’s dinner.”

“How are you so sure that they won’t disappear?”

“This whole valley is a military complex, there’s only one or two places they could’ve gone. And they won’t get out of the complex carrying a classified prototype on the truckbed. The gun is here, somewhere.”

Which probably meant that whoever had killed the frozen guy was there, somewhere, too.

“Something smells fishy here.”

“You don’t say, Inspector.”

Why did she feel tingly inside, when she should be furious and determined to hunt?

I mean, she was totally determined to hunt, but also…

Veta hurried to leave the safety of their improvised shelter and scanned the surroundings, quickly. The smell of burnt wood, smoke and ozone was so intense. There were small portions of smoking wood everywhere, tree-stumps turned into burning coals and now there were not one, but three circles of dark frozen ground and splinters. The body seemed to have disappeared; for a second, the former Inspector couldn’t remember where she had seen the victim last. In his haste, Fred had rolled them both over a hundred meters away from the primary impact zone, which had probably saved their lives. She would have to thank him properly for that, later.

Ah, she found it at last. The body was tucked against another tree, probably blown away by the shockwaves.

The Spartan was beside her in less than a blink. “You sure you’re okay? You look… angry.”

Well, Veta had reasons to look unhappy.

Her crime scene was ruined. A mess of melted snow and charred wooden splinters, the body was on an entirely different position and damaged.

She wasn’t going to let this wear her down. Veta Lopis had conducted forensic analysis on worse crime scenes, and the good news is that the heatwave of the explosions had also melted the snow that blanketed the victim, she wouldn’t need to clean it up to observe. Any other evidence that could’ve existed on the drop site was now effectively gone, but one could never have it all perfectly laid out, right? She started walking, with Fred trailing behind like a predator.

Upon reaching the body, she confirmed that it had been partially affected by the blast.

Again, she would have to work with what she had.

Veta picked up a stick from the ground and moved slowly around the corpse.

“Victim is male, early to mid-forties most likely. Caucasian, was married. Would dare to say that he was a paper-pusher, doesn’t have the build of a field operative or the color of one, for that matter. He was killed somewhere else and dumped here.” she would guess. With the crime scene all messed up, now she couldn’t tell for sure. Veta squatted beside the body and used the stick to move a flap on the uniform’s shirt. Her eyebrows rose. “I present you Commander Ethan Vries. Special Materials Division.”

Shit. He was a paper pusher, and a well-paid one.

“How long do you think he’s been dead?”

“In this weather? It could be anywhere from a day to six months.”

Fred nodded and squatted beside her. “I’ll risk forty-eight hours. An officer can’t go missing for long without anyone reporting it.”

Veta hummed. That had been her guess, too.

She pointed at the victim’s head with her stick, then she scraped a reddish-brown cluster of crystallized blood to uncover something below.

“The caked blood here, both sphenoid and temporal bones look caved in. Cause of death was very likely blunt trauma, heavy object with a pointy end or sharp edges.”

“So, a tool. Like a hammer.”

“Maybe.” she squinted. “Is there any kind of workshop nearby?”

Fred pursed his lips. “Maybe.”

“So, what do they do there?”

“That’s classified.”

“I literally defected to your party, Fred. It pains me to say it, but _I’m one of yours._ ”

She was right about that, as a matter of fact. The thing is, Fred wasn’t sure what he could and could not tell to a Section III operative such as her, now. It pained her to say she was one of them? Well, it pained him to admit that they were still playing in different leagues although they wore the same colors.

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that.” Veta scowled in a way that made the Spartan’s senses perk up in excitement. “So, I’ll ask again: what is it that they do here? What is the Special Materials Division?”

Fred sighed. “Fabrications. They make things like the mini-MAC.”

“And they have a workshop around here.”

“We’re technically standing on it.”

“See? That wasn’t so hard.” Veta stood up and he immediately followed, she threw the stick away. “Now, why is it that you don’t look too worried about this, Fred?”

He shrugged a little. “The warthog has a transponder, the drone picked it up. It will give me the location once they stop moving.”

“So, whoever did this is stupid, or…?”

“Or they have a good plan.”

“And you’re not worried about _that_.”

“Like I said, they can’t leave the complex without raising suspicions. Rats in a maze.”

“Sure. Unless there’s a whole operation going on under the nose of the UNSC.”

He cocked his head to the side, considering it. “Unless _that_.”

Veta squinted, again.

“You know what I’m thinking?”

“No, but we got to keep moving. I know you will tell me, anyway.”

The Spartan turned around and started walking towards the outskirts of the forest, heading to the other ‘crime scene’ atop the ridge.

Of course, when she followed, _she saw it_ and her soul almost left her body:

“Fred, your back!”

He stopped dead on his tracks. Even tried to look over his own shoulder. “What is it?”

“I thought you said you weren’t wounded!”

“Nothing hurts.” Fred seemed completely unfazed.

She blinked a few times, clenching and relaxing her fists.

“How can _that_ not hurt? Your back is literally paved with wood splinters!”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” she huffed, stunned.

Veta figured that, with the pressure of an explosion of such magnitude and at that speed, the splinters of the vaporized trees had turned into shrapnel. Deadly shrapnel. Most of the left side of Fred’s back was littered with pointy red ends that poked out of his uniform’s shirt, there was a lot of blood on the fabric as well. He had to feel the wet cold, right? She was freezing herself!

It had to hurt, how the hell was he talking to her so calmly, walking, how did he even…?

_Did he roll across the forest floor more than a hundred meters, hurt like that?_

“Something stings, that’s all.”

Veta rolled her eyes. She shouldn’t be surprised at all.

“We got to take care of that.”

“It can wait, there’s a priority.”

She stood on his way, immediately forbidding him to take another step.

“Use the drone to find our perps while I pick those things off you, unless you want to get an infection.” she decided, dead serious. Her tone didn’t admit replies. To be honest, the Lieutenant knew better than to try and argue when Veta looked so full of determination, too. “Now, let’s get back to the ridge and see what we can find. Hopefully there’s a medkit or something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know next to NOTHING about forensics, I just applied some word-salad made with things I’ve learned from the time when I liked to watch shows like Bones and NCIS. This fic is mostly an exercise in improvisation than a big story with a serious take, I add to it just for fun, I have no real plot in sight, I write something new whenever I get an idea or some dialogue comes to mind. Here’s to hoping that at least it’s fun to read. *smoochies* I’ll be back soon enough, I suppose!


End file.
